INFERNO, Episode 152. Identity Theft In The Middle Ages: Inferno, Canto XXV, Lines 79 - 141

We've reached the third and final metamorphosis in the seventh of the evil pouches, the malebolge that make up the eighth circle of hell in INFERNO.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore Lucan, Ovid, and Dante's own masterwork COMEDY to uncover the roots of this complicated yet clear passage among the thieves in hell. Identity theft is not just a modern problem. It's a medieval one, too.

Here are the segments of this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE:

[02:23] My English translation of this passage: Inferno, Canto XXV, lines 79 - 141. If you'd like to read along, just scroll down this page.

[06:51] The passage begins, not with narrative, but with metaphor.

[11:40] The third metamorphosis among the thieves in the seventh of the malebolge is a blasphemous inversion of creation and procreation.

[13:50] The passage is rife with references to Lucan's PHARSALIA. And rife with erotic implications, too.

[17:23] The references to Lucan's PHARSALIA (Book IX, lines 761 - 804).

[22:28] The references to Ovid's METAMORPHOSES: Arethusa (Book V, lines 572 - 641) and Cadmus (Book IV, lines 563 - 603).

[29:04] A comparison of Ovid's Cadmus story with Dante's metamorphosis.

[33:44] Language is destroyed and created as the last act of this metamorphosis.

[34:50] The passage ends with a bit of dialogue--which doesn't tell us much.

[37:36] Reading the passage (INFERNO, Canto XXV, lines 79 - 141) one more time.

And here is my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXV, Lines 79 – 141

Just as a lizard, under the heavy lash of the Dog Star,

Runs from hedge to hedge

And glitters like lightning as it crosses the road,

Just so appeared a flaming little serpent,

Purple and black like peppercorns,

He came right up to the gut of each of the other two.

Right at that spot where we get

Our first food, it fixed itself onto one of them.

Then it fell off and stretched out in front of him.

The bitten one looked at the serpent but said nothing—

Instead, he just stood planted on his feet, yawning,

As if fatigue or a fever plagued him.

He held the serpent’s gaze, and it held his.

Smoke billowed out from both his wound

And the serpent’s mouth—and then the plumes commingled.

Let Lucan shut up right now, especially where he talks

About the misery of Sabellus and Nasidius,

Let him wait to hear what my bow lets loose.

Let Ovid shut up in those passages about Cadmus and Arethusa.

If his poetry morphs one into a snake and the other into a fountain,

I’m not jealous of him in the least—

Because with two natures facing each other,

He never transformed things so that their forms

Quickly swapped places with their materiality.

They responded to each other by normative rules:

The snake made a fork in its tail

And the wounded guy’s feet pulled in together.

His calves, then his thighs stuck together,

So tight in fact that it was impossible

To see a crack between them.

Meanwhile, the snake’s tail took the shape

That the other had lost, and its skin got soft

While the other’s got hard.

I saw the man’s arms shrink up to their pits

And the two feet of the beast, which were short,

Lengthened in a reverse way to what the other guy lost.

Its back feet then twisted together

To become the member that men hide

While the one on the miserable soul became two paws.

The smoke enclosed both the one and the other,

Giving off a new color and making hair grow on the parts

Of one while it sloughed off the parts of the other.

One stood up and the other fell down,

But neither of them turned their baleful lanterns from each other,

Even as their muzzles were changing under them.

The one who was erect scrunched up his face toward his temples

So that the excess material extruded itself into ears

Out of his smooth, flat cheeks.

The excess material that didn’t switch around toward the back

Made the stuff of the nose on his face

And thickened his lips to the right size.

As to the one on the ground, his muzzle stretched out

And his ears pulled back into his head,

About as the horns of a snail retract.

His tongue, which had been in one piece

And capable of speech, split itself—and the forked tongue

Of the other one fused together. That’s when the smoke stopped.

The one that had become a wild beast

Fled, hissing, down the valley,

And the other who could speak now spat at that beast.

Then he turned his new shoulders

Toward the third guy and said, “My wish is that Buoso has to run,

As I have had to, on all fours in this ditch.”